


The Kitchen Ghost

by Andian



Category: Golden Girls
Genre: Gen, Ghosts, Humor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-25
Updated: 2019-10-25
Packaged: 2021-01-03 08:26:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,741
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21176387
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Andian/pseuds/Andian
Summary: “Oh Dorothy, it’s the ghost! It’s back again!”“The ghost,” Dorothy said slowly. “It is back?”





	The Kitchen Ghost

**Author's Note:**

  * For [chase_acow](https://archiveofourown.org/users/chase_acow/gifts).

“Dorothy. Dorothy. Dorothy!”

Without turning around Dorothy reached for her pillow and placed it over her head.

“Dorothy, are you awake?”

“No, Rose. I am not,” Dorothy’s muffled voice came from underneath the pillow.

“Oh,” Rose said. “Dorothy, please wake up then.”

Dorothy’s eyes snapped open and with a loud sigh she finally sat up in her bed.

“Rose, it is quarter past four in the morning, what do you want?”

“Oh Dorothy, it’s the ghost! It’s back again!”

“The ghost,” Dorothy said slowly. “It is back?”

Rose nodded fiercely, a look of fear in her eyes.

“Yes, I thought it was finally gone but just now I saw it again, only in the kitchen this time.”

“You have seen it before?”

“Yes! It is walking around the house, you know, in the middle of the night, in the hallway or to the bathroom…”

“Rose, this is a house full of women over sixty, it would be more supernatural if there wasn’t anybody going to the bathroom in the middle of the night!” Dorothy snapped.

She laid back down, pulling her blanket up to her chin.

“I am going to bed and I suggest you do the same. I need my beauty sleep.”

“I don’t think you can sleep that long. Unless you’re Briar Rose” somebody said from the door.

Dorothy sighed loudly.

“Ma,” she said, trying to aim for patient but failing. “What are you doing here?”

“Regan MacNeil over there woke me up.” Sophia turned towards Rose. “If you have to see ghosts, can’t you be quiet about? You know in the old country we used to say, the good thing about dead men is that they are silent.”

“Just leave my room, both of you!” Dorothy yelled.

“Darlings, what’s going on, I was having such a nice dream,” Blanche said, striding into the room. “There was this really muscular young man who was teaching me how to ride a motorcycle and…”

“I doubt you need any more lessons in riding things, Blanche,” Dorothy interrupted her.

Rose looked confused.

“I didn’t know you were good with motorcycles,” she said guilelessly.

Sophia opened her mouth and Dorothy quickly threw off her blanket.

“Right, as much as I enjoy talking with all of you in the middle of the night, can you please all go now?”

“But Dorothy,” Rose protested. “What about the ghost?”

Dorothy closed her eyes and counted to ten. She made it to three.

“Rose, there are no such things as ghosts.”

“There are! Back in St. Olaf…”

“It’s four in the morning, I refuse to hear about St. Olaf!”

Rose snapped her mouth shut and Dorothy felt a pang of guilt.

She sighed.

“If we go and check in the kitchen for your … for your ghost can I then please go back to bed?”

Rose nodded eagerly.

“Maybe it just wants to talk, you know. It must be lonely, being dead and all alone with no one around and no one to talk to.”

“Yes. I envy the ghost,” Dorothy mumbled. “Let’s get this over with.”

She climbed out of her bed and walked, followed by the other three women, to the kitchen. Without hesitation Dorothy opened the door and switched on the light. The kitchen looked the same as always.

Dorothy made a broad sweeping gesture. “There,” she said. “Nothing wrong. Can I go back to bed now?”

“But Dorothy,” Rose protested. “You didn’t really check. What if it’s hiding?”

“Where would it be hiding, Rose? In the fridge?”

“Well if I were a ghost I would,” Blanche mused. “If you’re dead you can’t gain any weight, can you?”

“My cheesecake can put some meat even on skeletons,” Sophia said. “And since we are already here…”

Sophia walked over the fridge and opened it, taking out the cheesecake she had baked in the afternoon.

“I got to say,” Blanche said, staring at the cake. “That does look very delicious, Sophia.” Slowly Blanche made her way to the kitchen table. Sophia carried it over.

“If you want some get some plates and forks,” she said, nodding at Dorothy and Rose.

“Ma,” Dorothy sighed. “It’s the middle of the night.”

“You have to eat when there is food,” Sophia said. “And there is food now.” Rose had already started putting plates and forks on the table.

With another sigh Dorothy sat down at the table. It was unlikely she’d get any sleep after all this anyway.

“Really,” she mumbled as she watched her mother cut the cake. “This is ridiculous … that piece, please Ma, it’s bigger.”

“Well, it is kind of exciting, isn’t it?” Blanche mused, gracefully holding the fork in her hand. “I remember there used to be a haunted house in the neighborhood when I was younger. Full of skeletons and spooky ghosts and vampires. Though the vampire was usually Billy Huxton from down the road and once they closed the haunted house for the night, we’d sneak back in and…”  
  
“Not the kind of excitement we are getting here, Blanche,” Dorothy interrupted her, stabbing her cake with her fork. She had classes in the morning and the cake did little to compensate for her bad mood about the sleep she was currently losing. “There are no such things as ghosts.”

“You can’t know that, Dorothy,” Rose said. “I mean it’s not like you have ever seen one, have you?”  
  
“No, I have never seen a ghost because there are no such things as-“

Dorothy stopped mid-sentence and stared in the distance.

“Girls,” she then hissed. “I think there is someone in the garden. Don’t react or make any loud noises.”

Rose dropped her fork with a loud yell.

“Oh no! It’s the ghost, isn’t it?!”

Dorothy had to resist the urge to bury her head in her hand and never look up again.

“It’s not the ghost, Rose,” she said. “And be quiet!”  
  
“Oh, what should we do,” Blanche said, staring at their glass door with wide fearful eyes. “It could be a burglar!”

“You guys stay here and pretend everything is fine,” Dorothy said, slowly putting down her fork. “I will go into the living room and call the police.”

“Why can you leave and we have to stay,” Rose cried out.

“Then you go and Blanche and I stay,” Dorothy hissed.

“I don’t want to stay either!”

“Well we can’t all leave that would be suspicious and-“

“Where did Sophia go,” Rose suddenly interrupted her. Confused Dorothy looked to her right, expecting her mother to sit next to her. The chair was empty though.

And then Dorothy looked through the glass door into the garden and her heart almost stopped.

“Ma,” she yelled as she jumped out of the chair, any pretense of keeping quiet forgotten. “Get back in here! Where did she get the baseball bat from?!”

There was a wild scramble as Dorothy ran to the door, followed by Blanche and Rose. Dorothy opened the door, grabbed her mother by the shoulder and pulled her back inside

“Ma, what are you doing! Didn’t you hear me say that there is somebody out there?!”

“Yes, which is why I brought the bat,” Sophia said, lifting it up.

“Oh my god, Ma, you can’t just go out and beat people up with a bat!”  
  
“Well, if you stop me then I can’t do that.”

“Let’s just … let’s just all go back inside.”

“If there is somebody out here he is probably gone anyway what with all the noise,” Blanche added.

Just then there was suddenly a loud yell coming from the table.

“The cake…!” Rose stammered, pointing with shaky fingers at one piece of the cheesecake. “The ghost ate it!”

“Rose, don’t be stupid, it was like that before!”

“It wasn’t, Dorothy! I have only eaten one bite! And now it’s almost gone!”  
  
There was indeed, Dorothy had to admit, only a small piece of the cake left. But Dorothy would be damned before she admitted this.

“This is … we’re all just very excited,” she said, trying to be calm. “I think we should all just go to bed and tomorrow we can talk whether we should call the police.”

Rose looked like she was about to protest but a sharp look from Dorothy made her shut her mouth and just nod.

The rest of the group just mumbled something and slowly made their way out of the kitchen.

Dorothy grabbed her mother’s arm.

“Ma,” she said slowly.

“What?”

With a pointed look Dorothy glanced at the baseball bat. With an eye roll Sophia handed it over before walking out of the kitchen, mumbling something to herself under her breath.

“Good thing I didn’t bring the good one,” was the last thing Dorothy heard. For the sake of the small rest of her sanity she chose to ignore it.

Sighing she looked at the messy kitchen table in front of her, deciding to at least put away the cheesecake.

Lifting up the cake she turned to the fridge when she suddenly heard the door open behind her.

“Ma,” she said, not turning around. “You’re not getting the bat back.”

There was no answer as she opened up the door of the fridge.

“If it’s you Rose,” she continued as she moved away the eggs. “We’re not talking about the ghosts until tomorrow!”

There was still no answer. Dorothy had finally managed to stuff the cake back in the fridge.

“And if it’s you Blanche,” Dorothy said, turning around. “I will tell you the same thing as the motorcycle guy from your dreams did which is-“ She trailed off.

The kitchen behind her was empty. There was nobody there. For a moment Dorothy felt foolish and confused. But no, she thought, she had heard the door open.

With a frown Dorothy took a few steps forwards. Then she saw the plates on the kitchen table. They were completely empty, any trace of cake gone. It looked as if somebody –or something- had even picked off the crumbs.

Dorothy stared at the plates for a very long moment. Then she walked towards the kitchen door and opened it.

Slowly she turned around and looked at the kitchen, still empty.

She raised her hand.

“If you touch my chocolate,” she said loudly “I will kill you again.”

Without another look she left the kitchen and went straight back to bed.

This, she decided, was a problem to deal with in the morning. Or never. Preferably never.


End file.
